Afterworlds

“I like books where magic has a cost,” Imogen went on. “The more powerful Lizzie gets, the more she loses.” She leaned closer. “You’ve got the juice.”

“The what?” Darcy asked.

“You don’t just write well, you tell stories.” Imogen’s voice was a whisper now. “Beautiful sentences are fine, but the juice is what makes me turn pages.”

Darcy closed her eyes. Their lips met, and she breathed in the scent of the sun-heated tar beneath them and the salt of Imogen’s skin. She felt the rumble of the traffic below traveling up through the building and into her spine, her fingertips, her tongue. Her breathing slowed to match the pace of Imogen’s, steady and deep.

Imogen’s hand moved to the back of Darcy’s neck, fingers interlacing with hair, holding her close even after the kiss was over.

Darcy whispered, her lips brushing Imogen’s as she spoke: “Wow. You are hot for my book.”

“Totally.”

It meant everything, but Darcy wanted more. “No criticisms?”

“Well, you know. It’s a first draft. And a first novel. And don’t ask me if you’re hijacking Hindu gods, because I don’t have a clue.”

Darcy opened her eyes. “Okay. But what did that second one mean?”

“About it being a first novel? Well, it might be a little bit innocent, for a book about death.”

“Innocent?” Darcy pulled back. “Is that what you think I am?”

“Good question.” Imogen drew closer, studying her. “Until ten seconds ago, I had no idea whether you were into me or not. Are you, like, incredibly smooth or just . . .” She blinked slowly. “Have you ever kissed a girl before?”

“I never kissed anyone before,” Darcy said in a rush, so she wouldn’t have time to chicken out and never say it at all. “Not really.”

Imogen was silent for a moment—a little too long.

“Seriously?” she said at last.

Darcy nodded. There had been a sort of practice kiss with Carla once during a sleepover, and an attempt at real kissing with the boy who was cocaptain of the Reading Zealots. But neither of those had counted, and this did.

“Was I okay?” Darcy asked.

“Better than okay.”

“If you hated it, would you be lying right now?”

“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that.” A smiled curled Imogen’s lips. “Don’t you trust me?”

Darcy had never seen anyone talk the way Imogen did about things that mattered to her. No one could lie that fiercely, could they?

“I trust you.”

“Good.” Imogen’s eyes shone with the last band of pink in the sky before nightfall. She leaned closer, and they were kissing again. At first Darcy’s hands clutched at the warm tar of the rooftop for balance. Then she reached up to take Imogen’s shoulders, to feel the muscles flexing. She drew Imogen closer, tighter, and they stayed that way until Darcy’s phone buzzed in her pocket.

“Sorry . . .” She pulled away, reaching for it. “My friends from Philly might be lost.”

“Like I said, my timing sucks.”

Darcy read the message. “Crap, they’re already here! Someone let them in and they’re down there looking for me!”

Imogen got to her feet and held out a hand. “Come on. Duty calls.”

Darcy stood, guiltily wishing that Carla and Sagan had missed just one more train. But it would be cruel to leave them alone in a room full of authors they idolized.

At the roof stairway, Imogen kicked the piece of concrete aside, and the metal door slammed shut behind them. They descended quickly, and a moment later stood before the door to 4E. The sounds of a healthy party were leaking out into the hall.

Imogen took Darcy by the shoulders. “You okay? You look kind of dazed.”

Darcy was very dazed and very okay, too much of both to discuss in the hallway. Instead, she rose a little onto her toes and they kissed again.

Then she straightened herself and, still holding Imogen’s hand, opened up the door.

CHAPTER 16

I DRESSED QUICKLY IN JEANS and a sweatshirt, then crept to the kitchen to get a knife.

I didn’t know if metal blades worked on ghosts, or even if the thing in the basement was a ghost, but any weapon was better than bare hands. I chose a short, narrow knife with a fat metal handle.

Mindy was still standing on my bed, afraid to touch the floor. Her eyes widened when she saw the knife. “We should just run away, Lizzie.”

“And hide in my mom’s closet?” I slipped the knife into my back pocket. “I live here, Mindy. I don’t have anywhere to run. And didn’t you say that ghosts should be afraid of me?”

“Whatever’s down there doesn’t sound very afraid, does it?”

As if in answer, the voice beneath us started up again, close enough to the floorboards that it could whisper. “Come down and play. . . .”

I shuddered, and slipped on the pair of sneakers beside my bed.

“Please, let’s just run away,” Mindy begged.

“No. I’m going to call someone.”

She stared at me. “Who?”

“Someone I met when I started seeing ghosts. Someone I didn’t tell you about.”

“You mean a dead person?”

I shook my head. “Someone like me.”

“A pomp?” Mindy turned away and jumped onto my desk, like a kid playing don’t-touch-the-floor. She was headed for the bedroom door, and then my mother’s room and the safety of her closet.

“It’s okay, Mindy! He’s nice.”

She turned back to me, balanced on the dresser. “They always say they’re nice. But then they take you away.”

I shook my head. “He saved me.”

Mindy looked at me like I was an idiot, and for a moment I wondered why I trusted Yamaraj so much. What if he took Mindy away from me?

But I’d seen enough horror movies to know that you didn’t check out scary noises in the basement all alone. Especially if your house didn’t have a basement.

“Trust me.” I took a step closer and reached for her hand. “I need to cross over to call him.”

“No way!” Mindy pulled away.

“Fine. I can do it on my own.” I took a deep breath. “Security is responding. . . .”

The thing beneath us went quiet, as if listening, and my voice grew steadier in the silence.

“Can you get to a safe location?”

The words made me shiver, stirring the night chill in the room. My breathing began to slow. It was weird, saying both sides of the conversation, but I could feel the spell working.

“I can’t, and he’s shooting everyone.”

The cold became a physical thing, pushing at me from all sides.

“Well, honey,” I said softly. “Maybe you should pretend to be dead.”

As the last word left my mouth, I felt myself cross over. It happened all at once, the shadows flattening to soft grays, the bright digits of my alarm clock going flickery and dim.

But this time the air didn’t taste flat and metallic. A sugary scent, like I’d smelled out in the desert, lay heavy around me. I looked down and saw a pitch-black stain growing in the center of my floor.

It was like the ink flooding the ghost school, or the black rivers I’d seen in the desert—a pool of emptiness. It started no bigger than a spilled cup of coffee, but spread across the floor as I watched.

“Don’t let it touch you,” Mindy said.

I took a step back. “Yamaraj, I need you.”

His name suddenly sounded like “mirage,” and it seemed crazy to expect him to hear me. He could be a thousand miles away, or a thousand miles below. . . .

But he’d come the first time I called him.

“Yamaraj, please come to me.” As I spoke his name again, heat flickered across my lips.

The pool of nothingness was drawing closer to my feet. I took another step away from it, and felt the wall at my back.

“What is this stuff, Mindy?”

“It’s the river,” she squeaked. “The stuff between up here and down there.”

The bed was close enough for me to jump to, but the blackness had reached the toes of my sneakers, and suddenly my feet were ice-cold. The muscles of my calves felt too weak to move.

A moment later my sneakers were sinking into the floor.

“How do I get out of this stuff?”

Mindy was too scared to answer, and only watched with wide, terrified eyes. I could feel the blackness creep up to my knees, as cold as winter mud. I reached out, trying to grab the edge of my bed, but it was too far away.

The iciness crawled up my body as I sank, every inch sending fresh waves of shudders through me. The sweet smell filled my lungs, almost too thick to breathe.

Just as it passed my waist, the door to my bedroom opened. It was my mother in a white nightgown. She must have heard me arguing with Mindy before I’d crossed over.

“Lizzie?” she called softly, squinting at my empty bed.

“Mom!” I yelled, but of course she couldn’t hear me. I was on the flipside now, hidden from her. Suddenly, being invisible wasn’t such a great superpower.

The black goo passed my shoulders.

“Yamaraj, I need you,” I cried one last time, and felt heat kindle on my lips again.

I tried to scream, hoping that my panic would pop me back into the land of the living. But the cold ink slowed the pounding of my heart and pressed the air from my lungs. It covered my mouth, my eyes, my ears, like liquid midnight sliding over me.

A moment later I was down in the river.

* * *

It was cold down here, and dark.

The only sound was a low moan, a steady wind scouring a huge, empty space. The air felt almost solid, ruffling my hair and clothes and trying to push me off my feet. But I wasn’t drowning, and at least I was standing on something solid; my feet had settled on a surface in the formless dark.

A glimmer of white appeared, not too far away—a man’s face.

He looked older than his voice had sounded, as old as my grandfather, very pale with white hair. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the rest of him came into focus. He wore a long coat covered with patches, and his hands were plunged into its pockets. The hem of his coat rippled in the wind.

He was staring at me. “You’re alive.”

“No kidding.”

His hand emerged to stroke his chin, pallid fingers shining in the darkness. His skin was pale, but not quite gray. It had a sweaty glow, like the gloss of a marble statue.

“What the hell are you doing under my bedroom?” My voice sounded thin against the constant wind.

“I smelled a little girl.” He had the slightest accent. “Is she yours?”

“Mine?”

He raised one pale eyebrow. His eyes were colorless, almost transparent, like those pale fish that live in ocean trenches, too deep for light to reach.

“You don’t collect?”

“Collect ghosts?”

“You must be new.” The man’s smile appeared gradually, like something controlled by a dial. It made the basement colder.

Then I realized that his skin glowed softly in the dark, just as mine did.

“You’re like me,” I said. He wasn’t some monster of legend. He was another psychopomp.

“Well spotted.” He was smirking at me. “But do you really know what we are?”

“Yes. And I don’t collect ghosts.”

“I could teach you how,” he said, taking a step forward.

“Stay right where you are.”

He smiled again. “Do I frighten you?”

“Terrorists with machine guns frighten me. You’re just pissing me off. I was trying to sleep.”

“My apologies.” He made a little bow. “But sleep is not something you need anymore.”